I don’t want to sound like a nerd, (ok, maybe I do), but I was just reading a paper called ‘tagging human knowledge’ by Paul Heymann, Andreas Paepcke, Hector Garcia-Molina.  Because I’ve been speaking recently about categorization and taxonomy and their importance in defining relationships of things, I completely neglected tagging as a viable method of organization.  I didn’t forget about it, but I didn’t think it was as reliable as a system organized by taxonomy experts and librarians.

From the abstract

A fundamental premise of tagging systems is that regular users can organize large collections for browsing and other tasks using uncontrolled vocabularies. Until now, that premise has remained relatively unexamined. Using library data, we test the tagging approach to organizing a collection. We find that tagging systems have three major large scale organizational features: consistency, quality, and completeness.

In addition to testing these features, we present results suggesting that users produce tags similar to the topics designed by experts, that paid tagging can effectively supplement tags in a tagging system, and that information integration may be possible across tagging systems.

The conclusion?  In a nutshell, organizing content by tagging works as well  (if not better) than organizing content using library systems.  Furthermore, it turns out that non qualified, non-paid individuals were just as effective at organizing content ans librarians and taxonomists.

I used to think that tagging wouldn’t work, just because there were too many random factors when you ask a person without knowledge of a thing to categorize a certain thing (that’s what tagging is, essentially) and couple it with financial motives.  I still think commercial applications of tagging are too open to manipulation, but it’s good to know that the system works.

Applications for tagging in SEO

So here’s where I decide to start using tagging more effectively on Harbour City SEO.  Play along at home if you like.

1st.  Go to delicious.com.  Type in the main keyword you’re targeting into their search box.  I did “SEO”.  Then I look at the first page of results.  All of the sites on there are ones I’m familiar with and pace a certain amount of trust with, so I take down the details of the tags I see them using.

2nd.  Take the common occurrences of tags and put them aside.  I eliminated any tags that only occurred once.

3rd.  Take the remaining list of tags and insert them into your tag structure if you’re using WordPress or another CMS that supports tagging.  If you’re not using a system with built in tagging capabilities, make sure the keywords are somewhere on your page.

This is the list I came up with:

• google
• keywords
• marketing
• ranking
• reference
• search
• seo
• tips
• tools
• webdesign

I’ll be sure to include those tags for my SEO strategy, as they should help increase relevance for my topics and usability for visitors.  Sweet sassy molassey, I’m excited to finally be using tags with confidence.  How about you, are you ready?